The long-term aim of this proposal is to establish the Texas Southern University Center of Excellence in Health Disparities Research (TSU-CEHDR). The CEDHR's primary objective is to augment and strengthen TSU's institutional infrastructure and capacity to conduct research aimed at addressing health disparities. The proposed CEHDR will include an Administrative Core, a Research Core, a Training/Mentoring Core, and a Community Outreach/Dissemination Core. The goals of the Administrative Core are to: 1) coordinate research, community outreach/dissemination, and training/mentoring components and 2) facilitate interinstitutional collaboration. The goal of the Research Core is to train Faculty Fellows to examine biological, clinical, and sociological factors related to cardiovascular disease and stroke in minority populations. These projects will be carried out in coordination with TSU's existing Center for Cardiovascular Diseases and the Research Centers in Minority Institutions-Institute for Biomedical and Health Disparities Research. Pilot research projects will focus on 1) factors affecting information transfer between research centers and local communities, 2) factors in clinical settings that affect cardiovascular health, and 3) endogenous mediators of hypertension and stroke. The goal of the Community Outreach/Dissemination Core is to disseminate research from the CEHDR into targeted communities (K-12, health professions, community-based organizations, community residents, and researchers at Texas Medical Center Institutions) by linking with an existing network of community health collaboratives in the Houston area. This network, developed by St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities (sub-component of a tertiary care health system), actively addresses local health concerns in 10 multi-ethnic neighborhoods highly affected by health disparities. The goal of the Training/Mentoring Core is to provide mentoring by linking junior faculty at TSU with established researchers at TSU, Houston Center for Quality of Care and Utilization Studies, and Baylor College of Medicine. [unreadable] [unreadable]